


a problem

by grab_n_growl



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Arguing, Bloodplay, Canon Compliant, Charthur, Emotional Manipulation, Explicit Sexual Content, Graphic Description of Corpses, Hand Jobs, Hurt, Implied Relationships, M/M, Neutral Ending, Sexual self-harm, Spoilers, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships, chapter 6, depiction of gore, implied - Freeform, very little comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:48:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27087379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grab_n_growl/pseuds/grab_n_growl
Summary: AndJavier, the little coyote, the man so desperate to forget what had happened to him, that he would serve those black wings no matter the cost, was now doing everything he could to try to keep themtogether. Didn’t seem to understand that what they’d had, it wasover. Done. Gone. Charles could taste it in the air like rainfall, could feel the tempest on the wind.Charles was tired of playing nice.I’ll use my brain, and you use yours.
Relationships: Arthur Morgan/Charles Smith, Javier Escuella/Charles Smith
Comments: 7
Kudos: 22





	a problem

**Author's Note:**

> a little short, but i'm happy to be writing for the community again! hope ya'll enjoy c:

_ brother, brother, brother _

Javier always had a way of  _ curling  _ that word over his teeth, like a coyote’s tongue lapping at the maw after a scavenged meal-

Savoring the taste of  _ scraps, sultry, quiet-like. _

Made people  _ trust him,  _ in the way only Americans with bright ideas that extended no further than the border to the next county could, enamored with the concept of a  _ regal greaser.  _ Like they all expected him to be  _ worse.  _ And yet, as much as the world sneered at an accent-

-how soon did women fall to his feet, how even men would stare with  _ longing. _

_ natural charm, brother. _

Charles knew what charm was.

Saw it in the way Dutch  _ commanded  _ a room, a king amongst thieves, embroidered with jewels as shiny and flashy as his  _ hypocrisy. (but dutch… dutch is different! _ )  **_different different different._ **

that’s what they all say.

Saw it in the way that, despite his best efforts to the contrary, Arthur’s presence filled camp in all the ways Dutch  _ didn’t,  _ good and solid and true, even as his lungs  _ rattled. (don’t know how we got anything done before you joined us.)  _ **_they had you, arthur, that’s how._ **

and charles took no qualm with flattening micah to the ground like a  _ bug  _ to defend it.

Saw it in John’s scars carved into his face had everyone’s attention on the street, a  _ wolf amongst wolves,  _ and the way his tongue curbed in ways that made him  _ so so much like Arthur,  _ there was no question they were brothers.  _ (we’re gonna die like dogs.)  _ **_maybe, john. maybe. but you won’t._ **

there was a certain kind of  _ ethereal quality,  _ to look at someone in the midst of a slow, rotting bloodbath and  _ know  _ they would survive.

Lenny’s boyish  _ smiles  _ and bookish  _ eyes,  _ Sean’s crooked  _ grins _ and flamboyant  _ dances. _

Saw how Bill  _ lacked it _ . In his fumbles and grumbles, clumsy as a  _ bear cub  _ and about just as  _ lethal.  _ Loyal as a dumb dog, didn’t know anyone from Adam as long as there was  _ someone  _ to hold his leash for him.

Saw how Micah was  _ so very charming,  _ in all the dangerous ways. And yet, nothing had given Charles as much pleasure as he listened in-

_ i’m not a  _ **_monster_ ** _ , miss. _

_ no, of course not! you’re not that  _ **_interesting._ **

ho, lord, charles was in love with mary-beth in that moment. 

but he had to sink his teeth into his lip to stifle the sickly  _ grin he felt growing. _

And  _ Javier.  _ Was a man in a class all his own. Desperate to parody after Dutch’s fantastical talk and  _ pretty boy  _ speeches- oh, so  _ empowering, your highness- _

part why he didn’t like  _ talking. _

far too damn  _ easy  _ to use it terribly.

But to the starving man who’d been given a home, the crow was an omen of  _ hope. Survival.  _ And Charles supposed that’s how so many of them were still  _ here.  _ Caught. Stupid. Sitting in the rotten curve of Beaver’s Hollow, the place he’d fought tooth and nail for-

_ blood in his eyes, fiery creatures, screams ricocheting off the walls- _

charles hadn’t gone inside that cavern of horrors since he and arthur had cleared it out.

so marinated in blood he could  _ taste it in the air,  _ could feel  _ death seeped into its walls. _

_ you’re undermining us all, just when it matters the most? _

_ who said that? micah?  _ **_dutch?_ **

_ be strong, be  _ _ together. _

Javier liked to pick  _ fights  _ nowadays, like an animal caught in a trap.

**_desperate._ **

_ what’s your problem,  _ **_brother?_ **

What exactly was it, about him, that even the rhythm of the hammer against the wagon wheel had Javier rounding on him like he’d just spit in the man’s dinner?

_ … no problem. _

(but there would be one, if the coyote didn’t quit  _ snarking _ .)

_ no, you have a problem- look at how you’re acting! _

Me?  _ Me, me,  _ **_me?_ ** There was something to be said about the patience of bison. The fall of the hooves, certain, sure… Charles had always preferred animals to people. It had been his way, for as long as he could remember.

learned to be  _ calm. _

and he was thankful for the lessons the wildlife taught him.

(the wolf to cooperate, the fox to think, the owl to watch, the bison to be strong, the stag to stand alert and proud…)

Coyotes, too, he learned from. In their yipping  _ barks  _ and whimpering  _ yowls _ , no matter how much they were scattered by the brush, the wind, the snort of a bison-

-they always  _ returned. _

_ Like now. _

There would be no winning for him in brandishing his horns, not yet. But he could always  _ remind the little dog  _ that they were there.

_ i don’t have a problem. do you have a problem? _

Oh, how Javier’s eyes  _ sparked  _ at that-

lighting a match on an oil rig, sparklers  _ raining  _ a white-hot crown upon onlookers. 

could feel the air  _ crackle, fingers on guitar strings by the firepit- _

_ i don’t know yet. _

Funny.

_ use your brain, friend. use your brain. _

_ Hilarious. _

For as long as Charles had been in the gang, he’d never even really  _ spoken  _ to Javier. The coyote was as dark as he was, preferring to stick to the sidelines with his  _ guitars and cigarettes. _

_ singing to the moon hangin’ flirtatious, _ like it would talk back.

and charles wasn’t a man for easy conversation. uncle and lenny had long since learned that lesson.

_ (i wouldn’t want to be stuck in the woods with you, charles) -  _ **_cool._ **

_ (i’ve had more fun watching the grass grow!)  _ **_\- please, go watch it..._ **

_ (fine conversation.)  _ **_\- … whatever you say._ **

Even when they’d been on the hunt for their lost little scottish terrier, the coyote and the bison had been  _ quiet, quiet, quiet,  _ as Trelawny fluffed up like one of those trimmed poodles on the doorsteps of mansions. Chattered like a  _ canary,  _ constantly in need of attention.

He filled the empty space. Charles and Javier had merely met eyes in distress.

_ He never shuts up. _

But that didn’t make them friends.

The two were here because, like all the rest, they had nowhere else to go. Part of Dutch’s  _ lost boys,  _ entangled in the snares he laid out _ so-pretty. _

Charles had thought Dutch was different-

but the hunter had never been partial to being pissed on and calling it  _ rain. _

_ How  _ Javier figured that he was better than the rest because he polished his boots as often as his dandelion-dripping, skull-carved  _ knives  _ was beyond him. Perhaps it was the desperation, the  _ crawling on hands and knees,  _ in a wild attempt to pretend that they could be  _ better  _ than who they were.

Like how  _ Dutch  _ pretended to know all in the world.

so he wouldn’t have to see his true  _ self in the mirror. _

He sent Arthur out. John out. Loyal hunting dogs, even if the leashes were made of barbed wire and  _ hurt.  _ They were there, and Charles couldn’t understand it. Loyalty was different in the tribe lifestyle, what little bits and pieces of it he could remember.

it wasn’t  _ conditional. _

based on how many  _ coaches you’d robbed,  _ how much  _ money  _ you’d brought in from thievery.

Charles was no saint. There was no wish to toss a wedding veil over it, frothy to hide the  _ blemishes,  _ no. The hunter felt the blood  _ thrum  _ in his veins when he squared to fight, to run someone through with his horns, crush someone beneath his feet-

but it wasn’t  _ fun. _

**_bred necessity._ **

He didn’t have much else choice.

But here they were, festering in a fetid pit of rot and  _ disease.  _ Could hear it in the rattle in Arthur’s chest, his pitiful  _ wheezes  _ in lungs that used to be braying strong. Sickness  _ simmering  _ under the skin, imprinted in his face and hanging haggard under his blood-stroked eyes.

Felt his own ribs  _ tighten  _ every time Arthur coughed.

Not like the man he used to know.

John, corralled like a wolf in a snare trap, snapping peevish and  _ angry  _ at all who dared to wrong him now.  _ Not such a loyal dog to you anymore, huh, Dutch?  _ Trying,  _ trying  _ to keep his family together, to hold on just  _ long enough… _

the snare was coming loose, John would make sure of it.

Hosea was gone, long gone. Left to bleed out in the streets- barely managed to get the body back. Grave-robbing was now a new thing to add to Charles’ lengthening list of sins and deeds. ( _ but was it a sin? to retrieve friends wrongly fallen? _ )

**_Wrongly?_ **

Was it really wrong?

The amount of hell we’ve raised,  _ we’re owed some back. _

_ Hosea, Sean, Lenny, Miss O’Shea…  _ picked off, one by one, like hive-minded partridges that took flight at the mere rustle of a hunter’s boot.  _ Easy targets  _ for those who wanted them  _ dead.  _

And it would seem the crow, perched on his throne,  _ thrived off the fresh corpses. _

And  _ Javier,  _ the little coyote, the man so desperate to forget what had happened to him, that he would serve those black wings no matter the cost, was now doing everything he could to try to keep them  _ together.  _ Didn’t seem to understand that what they’d had, it was  _ over.  _ Done. Gone. Charles could taste it in the air like rainfall, could feel the tempest on the wind.

_ Charles was tired of playing nice. _

_ I’ll use my brain, and you use yours. _

The response was near immediate. Quick, like the lash of a  _ whip,  _ the split tongue of a  _ snake  _ to taste the trail of a mouse, the rearing head of a  _ rattlesnake, strike of a hoof- _

_ oh, you wanna die? _

The bison was getting  _ mighty damn irritated. _

The sinew in his arms tightened, nooses around his  _ bones,  _ and he reveled in his own strength that he felt flex beneath the skin.  _ Ready.  _ Could feel the crackle of  _ thunder  _ in his chest, ricocheting off his ribs, electrifying his heart and lungs-

the veins and arteries like fingers of a  _ lightning strike. _

Stopped his silly little game of hammering at the wagon wheel, like doing it would make the coyote lose  _ interest.  _ Looked him dead in the eye, stone slamming into stone, fire against fire-

but Charles’ skull was  _ harder- _

_ not particularly. _

It seemed to take Javier off-guard, like he was expecting something he could easily  _ sink his teeth into.  _ Painfully like  _ Micah,  _ who said as stupid of shit he could manage, just because he could and because he wanted to rouse the spirit into a  _ scrap.  _ But this threat ran deeper, more dangerous, hanging in the air _.  _ But Charles didn’t back down now, not this time.

this was different, than just tossing Micah, or calling Bill for the  _ fool he was. _

This was a bison, standing strong, with every and all promises to kill if it had to, said quietly and gently.

_ I’m not going anywhere. _

The coyote hesitated, just a bit, and the indignant  _ anger  _ that was rising in the throat seemed to dissipate into a deflated growl-

_ you’re making a dumb choice, man. _

_ Ah, there it is.  _ The  _ desperation.  _ He could see it, right in those inked eyes- the  _ vulnerability,  _ the cracks in the pretty facade of polished boots and flowery knives.

The look that spoke of  _ hurt. _

Trying to keep  **_family_ ** together.

An accusatory finger pointed his way, tip calloused from death-bringing and guitar-playing. A posturing gesture, trying dearly to hold on to the  _ authority  _ in whatever this…  _ conversation  _ was.

_ i made no choices. _

It was fairly true. He was here because of  _ circumstance.  _ And regardless of his increasing rage against Dutch, he still went on their goddamn tricks and robberies. He was here until he could no longer stand it- until the Wapiti natives fell, whose demise he had long since foreseen and  _ felt. _

He knew it was coming.

What else was Javier supposed to  _ say  _ to that?

So he did what all mature, responsible, grown men did. Drew his chest up, like he’d won, and rounded to land a finishing blow- to  _ spit _ at Charles’ feet, who did not bother to move out of the way anyway. Turned to watch him go, the coyote with bristling hackles almost bowling little Jack over, who happened to be standing too close to being “ _ in his way _ ”.

_ seems he’s picked his side. _

_ Arthur.  _ Always the watchman.

Charles had turned to him, something akin to pain blooming like a slow gunshot in his chest to see just how  _ tired  _ and  _ broken  _ he looked. His voice was gruff, slower than usual, like he was pacing himself so he wouldn’t  _ cough. _

_ there’s sides now? _

A stupid question, but one he wanted an honest answer to. Did  _ Arthur  _ believe that?

_ seems that way. _

Yeah… it did.

. . .

That was hours ago.

The night was thick-black, but the air was less soupy than the swamps of skull-ridden  _ mud  _ even the locals feared that the group had moved to, before the Pinkertons could catch up.

Didn’t buy as much time as they’d wanted.

But these were not trees one could trust. They  _ whispered,  _ could drive you mad with their song through the leaves. Could see it in the way hardly anyone strayed from camp now, especially in the evenings. The scent of  _ death  _ soaked into the ground, never to be scrubbed away, at least not by man’s hands.

_ Howls  _ in the air.

Drove Dutch mad and madder still.

Charles preferred to settle at the fringes- avoided,  _ alone.  _ Either that, or spending his time at the Wapiti reservation, doing his damn best to  _ help.  _ To try to remedy at least a little bit of Dutch’s  _ colossal mistakes  _ and willingness to throw innocents under the bus in pursuit of his  _ fantastical dreams. _

They were just that.  _ Dreams. Dreams  _ and nothing more.

“ What is  _ wrong  _ with all of you? “

It would seem the coyote was not done  _ baying. _

Could just hear Abigail snapping back, and the man hardly had the time to stretch himself thinner to listen. Stayed quiet, kept an ear out, and the silence  _ deafened.  _ Or, it  _ was  _ silent, until he became so very aware of someone  _ following him. _

Quiet footfalls,  _ hunting. _

seeming to forget that he was a  _ hunter, too. _

Straightened the back, turn of the head, just to catch Javier in his vision, staring openly baleful and  _ angry,  _ a glower scratching dark lines into his visage. He supposed, to a regular man, such a look would be terrifying. Black eyes  _ flaming  _ like gasoline had been sparked alight on its silvery surface,  _ hard lines and sharp edges  _ in the worn and weathered face.

but Charles was no ordinary man. none of them were.

“  _ What?  _ you got somethin’ to say to me,  _ hombre? _ Estúpido toro… “

Now, Charles wasn’t a man for  _ languages.  _ But he did know a thing or two- no matter how much Uncle liked to say he was stupid for being so  _ quiet. _

“ Giineta. “

He said it with a  _ curl  _ to his lip, baring his teeth like a particularly testy wolf, and the word settled heavily in the air between them. And boy, did the coyote  _ rise  _ to the challenge-

“ What did you just say to me? “

The silvery knife he knew to be dripping with dandelions and daffodils, carved with skulls,  _ glinted  _ in the pallid glow of the moon’s flirtatious smile.  _ How fitting.  _ But there was no fear in the hunter’s heart. Javier was a good fighter, there was no  _ question. _

Charles had seen him rip throats from men, knife  _ twisting, twisting, twisting  _ into scarlet…

but the hunter did just the same, more explosively even, dispatching efficiently.

Javier took threatening steps forward. Every muscle poised, slow and methodical, golden-toed boots  _ sharp-shining- _

how  _ gaudy. _

And he could feel the  _ sick  _ rise like bile in his throat, gurgling on his tongue. Was quiet,  _ waited  _ until the bristling man was right in front of him with eyes spewing  _ danger- _

felt his heart’s rhythm measure out,  _ evenly- _

_ couldn’t stop himself- _

“ If you used your brain, maybe you’d know. “

It was impossible, he knew that. Ojibwe was not a language known by the white people here, let alone someone who wasn’t even from this country at all. It was something Charles had picked up on, just a bit, in his travels and encounters with other natives in his wandering, lonesome  _ journey  _ to  _ be someone.  _ To be  _ something  _ other than  **_afraid._ **

but the spark, like the clicking of a  _ gun,  _ that shot off in Javier’s eye was worth it.

Waited,  _ waited.  _ In the dark of the edge of camp, below the rise, with everyone else long since gone to bed or so steep in the fog of  _ despair  _ that they weren’t paying attention, anything could happen. Javier could kill him, just like he could do the same.

_ Your move, friend. _

_ Watched  _ as the coyote seemed to weigh options.

“ You gonna  _ make me, gran hombre?  _ “

And  _ that  _ settles between them. Corporeal, almost, like solidified cigarette smoke. It was a bite, a nip, a  _ challenge.  _ A clear wish for a  _ fight. _

but that tone is  _ eerie. testy. _

And Charles responds in kind, sigh hanging off the lips-

“ If I have to, Javier. “

Because that was the truth. If the coyote decided, for whatever reason, that the hunter’s head was supposed to be his dinner… well, the bison had no plans of going  _ down. _ Not tonight, nor any other not, not against the man who followed after a crow like it  _ cared about him. _

_ It didn’t. _

Javier seemed to not want to confront that reality.

The mouth  _ twitches,  _ like a puppet being pulled on strings, and the well-dressed, dolled-up, pretty-toed, blood-soaked man began a jeering  _ laugh  _ in the throat. A shake of head, hiding the eyes, pausing and looking down at his hands-

Charles stiffened-

he knew that look.  _ Knew when men did that- _

_ seconds from exploding, they always did that- _

_ glass shattered in his ears, against his face- _

_ his scar  _ **_burned._ **

Was prepared to dodge, and rightfully so. Flank fluttering, it seemed so fast, it was like nothing had happened at all. But the solid  _ thunk  _ of a knife sinking into the innocent flesh of the spindly, weedy tree sap beside Charles’ head told otherwise-

_ Embedded  _ in the space that the hunter’s head had been.

_ One,  _ **_two,_ ** **_three_ **

Charles counted the beats of his own heart, so battle-hardened it barely jumped in response to the fact he’d nearly had a knife between the eyes-

_ No time, no time, never any time- _

He lets the beats guide him.

In one step, he’s closed the remaining distance between him and Javier-

_ Two,  _ his knuckles  _ crackle  _ like the purr of a mountain lion having found its  _ prey- _

_ Three,  _ the resounding  _ break  _ of his fist connecting with the man’s jaw, feels the  _ bone- _

The two collapse onto the forest floor, a bison against a wily coyote, and both seem to decide their meals were  _ each other. _

Javier shows no mercy, sinking  _ teeth  _ into Charles’ forearm as it bears down, steel-toed boots very much  _ painful  _ as they wallop the hunter’s knees with the force of a horse’s kick-

streaks  _ lightning bolts  _ of pain behind the eyes-

grits the teeth, even as canines  _ sink  _ into the meat of his muscle-

Draws back the other arm to crush the flats of his closed fist into Javier’s ribcage, feels the  _ wheeze  _ breathed out against his skin-

gets a kick to the  _ stomach  _ for it, and the two are rolling,  _ rolling,  _ down the hill-

crashing through trees, this isn’t a fight of man against man.

It was two animals, lacking finesse, ripping each other apart the only ways they knew how.

It’s scrabbling, bruises  _ blooming  _ on the flesh as they knocked one another into trees, fingernails  _ scratching,  _ teeth  _ biting-  _ neither let the other get the distance to avoid it. Distance meant reaching for another  _ knife.  _ A  _ gun,  _ if either one was fast enough for it-

the mere thought in Charles’ head seemed to trigger the click in the other’s…

feels the knife in his embroidered flask be  _ unsheathed- _

Finds himself on his back, breathing heavy, as Javier straddles him and uses the force of two hands to try to sink the knife into the hunter’s  _ throat- _

held back by calloused hands wrapped around the wrists-

**_s u s p e n d e d._ **

And in the moment, they just… stare. That funny little way time seemed to be both slow and fast at the brink of danger, just out of its range and yet so  _ close.  _ Rattles through the bones, shot through the chest, and it’s as though the earth  _ pulsated  _ with the beats of their hearts. The passion of a fight. Blood spilt- he could taste the copper on his lip, could seen the sheen across Javier’s forehead-

Christ was always painted with a  _ bloodied barbed crown, was he not? _

Charles didn’t really know. It wasn’t his god.

_ Looking- _

_ javier had a  _ **_wild_ ** _ look in the eye- _

_ charles could feel the veins  _ **_flutter_ ** _ in his own- _

_ the coyote panted whine-soft and shivering- _

_ the bison was barrel-strong and controlled- _

_ one was  _ **_crying._ **

_ the other was not. _

Javier had always been the impeccable man. All dolled-up (like it  _ mattered _ ) and quick with the knife. One who  _ laughed,  _ happy and wide, when they’d gotten into the scrap at Valentine’s saloon- glee as he shattered a bottle over a man’s head. Who fired when he needed to.  _ Bled  _ when he had to.

fast as a rattlesnake-  _ tasted only what it needed, and nothing more. _

Charles was in a different way, in a way that was perhaps even more important. Kept it  _ inside.  _

Javier didn’t do that. And he wasn’t now. Face streaked with something akin to  _ agony,  _ years of running, of hiding, of fighting and rolling in the  _ dirt  _ just like they were now, showing lines of weather in the somber of his face.  _ Not pretty.  _ The cracks to the made-up face, like Dutch’s simmering  _ madness.  _

this was a man  _ hurting, and knew it. _

Dutch didn’t feel anything anymore, except, perhaps, the taste of his own bitter  _ failure. _

The strength seemed to dissipate from them both, the coyote slowly lax on the grip upon Charles’ knife, letting it slip from his fingers just as his body tipped sideways. Hiccuped, painfully, as those who cried often did. Sat  _ crumpled.  _ bruises blooming on the skin, blood fresh on the tongue, and the hunter laid there for a moment. Listening to the  _ heave  _ in Javier’s desperate breaths, hitching with the pain of the wallop that had landed on his ribs.

… Sat up, slowly. All eyes on the man who seemed to be falling apart, right there in the woods.

Didn’t flinch, when the tear-filled eyes looked baleful and  _ hateful  _ on him. He was used to eyes like that anyway, at this point.

“ I’m  _ trying.  _ Why aren’t any of you? “

Charles supposes it’s an honest question, one with so many answers that he can’t articulate. He doesn’t know how. He’s never learned how. The animals taught things without words. He knew things  _ without words.  _ But the flashy talk? That was all Dutch (how else was he going to get them all here?) and the hunter had no interest in learning.

so what was he supposed to do  _ now? _

“ … why are  _ you _ . “

The coyote curls a lip at that,  _ wincing  _ just slightly as the busted skin pulls taunt and painful-

“ This is  _ family.  _ This is  _ home.  _ And I’m here to fight for it, die for it, anything it needs me to do. Because we owe it to Dutch, for everything that he’s done to get us here. He  _ saved us.  _ Saved me, when no one else wanted me. Saved  _ you,  _ from being alone and dying alone. He’s saved all of us and  _ you’re my family,  _ why would I not fight for it? “

An accusatory finger, voice  _ wavering,  _ filled with air-

“ You- you’re turning your back on us. Like Arthur, like John, like Abigail, Uncle, Mr. Pearson,  _ Molly.  _ You’re tearing this family apart, you know that? You’re destroying  _ everything.  _ And that ain’t right. Dutch deserves better than that, for getting us here. “

… He chooses his words carefully.

“ If Dutch is why we are here right now… I don’t see anything to thank him for. “

The  _ silence  _ that hangs there aside from their evening breathing is telling. When Javier comes back, it’s with a vengeance of a kind,

“ Man, you don’t know what you’re talkin’ about. You just sit in the corner, making your arrows and chopping wood and being at Wapiti when we need you  _ here _ . Twiddling your damn thumbs all day- “

_ doesn’t let him finish- _

“ Like Dutch? “

_ A pause. _

“ When was the last time he was out? Getting us money, getting us what we  _ need?  _ When was the last time he donated to camp- when was the last time you saw his name written down on the ledger before the box was broken? “

“ He’s making  _ plans-  _ “

“ You tell me, Javier.  _ Is he?  _ What plans is he  _ making?  _ Ones that have gotten us  _ here.  _ In this hole, broken and dying, while he feeds it to you like it’s what you deserve when it  _ isn’t.  _ What about the natives? You mean to sit there and tell me what’s happening to them is deserved? Just another pleasant  _ distraction  _ for him, for  _ you?  _ “

The coyote’s hackles are bristling now, but Charles is far beyond caring.  _ He’s tired, so tired,  _ of all of this and he just wants it to  _ stop.  _ Wants to  _ leave,  _ but can’t get himself to abandon Arthur while things are still festering like this. Can’t get himself to abandon what bits of family he has here.

_ That  _ was family. Not making  _ excuses. _

“ Is it even him? Or is it  _ Micah?  _ The fact you spend your days prowling around camp trying to bully everyone into admitting submission is proof that  _ you know  _ we’re not who we were, not anymore. And you don’t want to admit it. “

There was something to the  _ catch  _ of the silvered moon upon the coyote’s face, swinging low and sultry in the sky- the guardian of the trees they’d entangled themselves in… that made him look mad, madder than Dutch, and yet far more _ afraid. Knowing.  _ Knowing when time was up, that the game was lost.

What else was there to say?

It would seem neither knew.

Jaws clicked together, the glance of canines and blood pooled on the tongue from bites and split lips. Bruises on the skin, mottling the dark and Charles felt nothing but  _ tired.  _ He was tired. That’s why he was turning his back on Dutch. That’s why he no longer followed the plans like a loyal puppy-dog.  _ That’s why  _ he looked not to the crow hanging as their figurehead, and looked to those he cared about.

“ … That’s not true. “

A sputter, with as much dignity as the one with fire in his eyes could manage. But that heat just couldn’t seem to burn the way Charles’ did in his ribs- in fact, both were spitting  _ smoke  _ at this point.

“ Enough, Javier.  _ Enough.  _ It’s over. “

_ Silence, _

_ hanging… _

_ like a noose in the wind. _

Coyotes howling eerie-like through the trees, crackle of carrion birds in the air, the symphony that signalled the brigade of  _ bloodseekers  _ to them. To others who had spilt blood- the hunter would not be surprised, if the layers beneath his skin were not his own blood, but the blood of his  _ people.  _ Put to rest in land that had been taken from them. His bones not his, but those of people he’d  _ killed  _ for Dutch. Dutch, Dutch, always for  _ Dutch... _

_ Javier  _ would never be able to go home.

He wouldn’t be buried in the soil that was his.

The man sitting in the dirt here, now, was both the man he knew and one he’d never met. Charles supposed that’s how he himself looked too. The way Javier looked at him, it rang guitar plucks in his head, ominous and  _ earthen.  _ Followed the rhythm of their hearts, shared breaths, and he didn’t know what Javier’s next move would be.

Wasn’t that what they were prided on? Being  _ unpredictable to the enemy.  _

No one in the books ever account for when friends become enemies.

When  _ family  _ became pictures you burned in fire pits.

The two balanced on a tightrope of tension, thick in the air like the taste of  _ blood,  _ sticky-sweet and copper-

What was the saying that Micah curled on his tongue ( _ like he’d ever read the scripture)- _

**_blessed are the meek._ **

Not them.  _ Not them.  _ The fight to hell had been long and arduous, and Charles looked it in the face every moment of the day.  _ Haunted,  _ by the ghosts in his head that he never spoke a word about.  _ Quiet, quiet…  _ like Javier was, at times.

Quiet, so many times, meant  _ danger. _

They swayed, cattails in the cold breeze of Beaver Hollow, and it  _ laughed. Laughed  _ at them, the two fools so worn-out their leather couldn’t even make a pair of boots that would last a day in a rainstorm.  _ Suspended. _

_ w a i t i n g . . . _

Enough for tonight. Javier pulled back his lips, a sort of  _ witch’s cackle  _ rising in his maw, as he swept his broken pieces off the dirt and meandered back to camp. Didn’t look back. Didn’t hesitate, though gait unsteady and  _ gaunt.  _ Left Charles there, alone like how he’d always wanted.

The hunter figured, as much as he liked being alone, he didn’t fancy being  _ lonely. _

_ Loneliness kills. _

The fight had just proven as much.

Hosea, so long ago it felt like years, had said something that Arthur had then bestowed to him-

_ i wish i’d acquired wisdom at less of a price. _

Blood took so long,  _ so long to wash out. _

It made sense. It was  _ deserved.  _ The spill of what kept someone alive should never be something easy to forget, easy to  _ erase.  _

His lip smarted fierce, bruise a hefty claw stretched along his ribcage. But he was alive, with none of Javier’s silvery knives embedded in his forehead, so he imagined that he could count himself  _ lucky. Lucky, lucky, lucky,  _ none of them were lucky anymore. They weren’t much of anything, but ghosts instead of  _ people.  _ And he supposed they deserved that too, for all they’d done.

Vengeance wasn’t  _ justice.  _ Else they wouldn’t be two different words.

(but it feels good, doesn’t it? people would ask- who’d never seen  _ real  _ bloodspill in their  _ life- _ )

_ no. it really, really doesn’t. it’s exhaustion, bone-weary, that never quite goes away. _

There was never any going back, after that. They didn’t speak. The trees did for them,  _ violence did for them. _

He sleeps without rest.

…

Every day, when he went along with one of Dutch’s  _ best laid plans,  _ the beat of hooves felt like the death march to his own grave.  _ Arthur,  _ more than anyone, who grew more a husk every day- it  _ hurt.  _

It didn’t make him feel better to see Javier garnished in the injuries the hunter had inflicted. And, if the coyote’s baleful eyes were anything to go by… it would seem he was just as unimpressed. Maybe, long ago, seeing the wounds of mortality they’d carved into others had felt _good_ to look at. It was a badge of survival. _They lost, you didn’t. You were still here._ _Still here._ But now? After all this bloodshed? All these bodies? All those souls destroyed? Charles didn’t feel avenged. Didn’t feel like he’d survived _anything._

More and more, it felt like those who lived were the unlucky ones.

Whatever it was, the hunter felt mighty  _ unlucky. _

It was a simple goal,  _ “simple”  _ according to the man who dictated it from the safety of his tent (or was it really safer? to be trapped in the physical manifestation of one’s own madness?  _ always reminded. _ )

_ shielded away  _ from the horrors outside- never having to see the consequences of your  _ actions. _

_ ignorance is bliss, so they say. _

Killing was never simple, it was never  _ easy.  _ And that much resonated with him when, in an unfortunate twist of events, the last clamors of the Murfree Brood had climbed the hill while  _ Dutch  _ took his first jaunt away from camp in  _ months.  _ Fucking around with Bill and Micah and the two stooges he’d brought along, doing God knows what. Arthur, gone to the wind, desperately rustling up a way to free his family from the clutches of the death that loomed over them.

It was just him, Javier, John…

The use of a hatchet was messy work, but brutally efficient work. And Charles had long since become a master at  _ brutal efficiency. _

Felt the  _ crack  _ of neck bones  _ breaking  _ under the weight of his axe-

_ blood in his mouth- _

_ flesh pliant under his fingers, ripped apart by his force- _

Could see Javier, wrists coated in scarlet, dual-wielding his precious knives with a  _ wild  _ look on his face- John, blowing the deformed head off of one with an angry emptiness in his eyes. Could  _ hear  _ the howls in camp, Abigail  _ shrieking,  _ the alarm raised high in camp-

The trees merely echoed it with the hundreds of people it had bore witness to being  _ murdered in these woods. _

_ Viscera on his hands- _

Purple and red, the flesh of a human being  _ dripping  _ off his fingertips. Mottled.  **Ugly.**

He didn’t flinch when his hatchet bore bone to the world. Could see it,  _ peeking  _ from the back of one of the brood he’d sunk the metal into.  _ It clicked, he could hear it.  _ The clatter sounded like the last roll of a dice almost, definitive,  _ final.  _ It was such an ugly wound.

Pink flesh  _ bubbling,  _ and in the cool ravine air, the hunter could see  _ steam  _ rise from exposed flesh.

It  _ gurgled,  _ popped like chewing cud, and Charles had long since lost his taste for it-

But had no energy left to be  _ sick. _

So he cut them down like saplings in the breeze,  _ shaving away  _ a man’s arm from his body,  _ crunching bone- _

_ It screamed, the bone, as did the man- _

And was  _ silenced  _ when Javier’s knife drove deep into the base of his skull, peeked over his  _ tongue. _

like a  _ snake  _ emerging from the man’s maw.

_ There was silence.  _ As the two stared at one another over the felled, poor, hideous creature they’d ripped from the world.  _ Quiet, so quiet,  _ except for their shared breaths. They were a bit of a ways down the hill, having tangled in forcing the Murfrees  _ out.  _ Could hear relieved murmurs on the wind, John’s voice  _ (everyone alright?) _

no… not anymore. but he was glad everyone was alive.

Faintly, he could hear the chime of a dreamcatcher’s beads on the wind, if he listened. And the look in Javier’s eye when they met,  _ steam  _ rising from their maws, brows knotted with sweat and blood, is anything and everything all at once. And something  _ bubbles  _ in his throat, gurgles there, and he wants to say  _ something, anything- _

Charles never feels the need to break silence, but now… he does. And Javier looks at him in this peculiar way he knew, but was not accustomed to-

The  _ curve  _ of dark gaze caressing him, head to toe, calculating and with a  _ t h r e a t . . . _

**_i won’t kill you._ **

**_there are worse things._ **

Charles thought he knew what those worse things were.

Evidently  _ not- _

Because he’s all defense, blindsided,  _ curdled  _ when the coyote stepped over the body like it was nothing but a patch of daisies,  _ cradled  _ his head between calloused, worn hands-

He’d never been killed this way before.

Although he knew one could, it had never happened to him before.

And, for a long moment, the two are  _ c a u g h t. _

Charles doesn’t know whether to go back or forward, hands clenched at his sides, half-raised in readiness to  _ defend himself.  _ From a knife, a shot, a bite, a strike. Feels the smooth-worn of his axe in his hand- proof he’d used it  _ so many times  _ and deserved all the karma he got for his choice in that- but doesn’t bear it down upon Javier. Not into the skin of the man whose eyes  _ he couldn’t look away from,  _ felt callouses brush his  _ skin, his hair,  _ and their foreheads are balancing against one another. 

It’s quiet in the woods.

It’s  _ quiet  _ where they breathe together, fog mixing-

It’s  **_quiet_ ** when Javier tilts his head, his adrenaline-worn gasps stuttering-

It’s  **_q u i e t_ ** when Charles holds his own breath back, like his body knew what to do, feels a shivering  _ gasp  _ high in his throat-

It’s quiet when Javier kisses him.

It’s so simple, so soft, but it’s more than a bare whisper. It’s a solid  _ press, skin on skin,  _ melding together. Charles hadn’t been kissed in a long time. Working girls, he avoided, and in their company, he was more interested in drinks and the  _ contact, touch-starved  _ in ways a man these days wasn’t allowed to say out loud. Particularly men like  _ him. _

The coyote wasn’t delicate, like he was handling glass- the pads of his fingertips  _ press  _ into the sweat-soak of Charles’ scalp and bone,  _ holding  _ him in place and his kiss gets deeper, deeper… and the hunter’s hand comes up, latches on to the rough line of the man’s hip, denim jacket-

_ Tightens  _ his grip, and then Javier has his tongue in his mouth and the upper hand-

_ Moves him- _

And when Charles feels bark bite solid into his back, they part, dark eyes hazy,  _ unfocused,  _ and he lets Javier keep him there. Knows the coyote can feel the strength under his shirt, just like how he can’t help but notice the veins, the  _ muscle,  _ in the forearms caging him in. 

_ Matched. _

Charles was no stranger to shivers down the spine- what was the phrase-

**_someone walking on your grave._ **

He’s not entirely sure what to expect, or maybe he does? Javier seems to, when rough fingertips catch on the curve of his skin, shift pushed up- the axe falls-

“ Javier… “

Man of few words, but the coyote doesn’t seem to mind, not in the way the canines  _ curl  _ into his lip, fingernails scratching now. Charles lets him,  _ lets him,  _ because… they were tied together, weren’t they? But it was a fraying rope, barely holding on by threads. It feels almost desperate.  _ Needy.  _ Like taking a swig off the whiskey you’d just sworn off- a last hurrah. 

This felt  _ impermanent.  _ Like all things.

Maybe it’s the haunted, worn,  _ blazing  _ shudder in Javier’s eyes, black swimming in front of him, a candlelight deep in one-  _ he can hear guitar strings _ \- that makes Charles let him. Maybe it’s his own heart, strong as a bull in his chest,  _ seizing  _ under the attentions of someone powerful. His hair had come undone in the massacre, mused and falling. Feels just as frazzled as they look.

This was not a tangle with someone soft. Delicate.

Charles wondered if either one of them deserved to have that, though.

Maybe,  _ maybe,  _ **_maybe, m a y b e . . ._ **

~~ Someday. ~~

Neither considered themselves to be heavily passionate men, but now..  _ now… _

_ Fuck it. _

**we have nothing left to lose.**

The hunter pushes back, broad palms, licks blood off Javier’s lips- feels pressure at the small of his back, winding them together with a sudden  _ crash,  _ solid body up against solid. Anybody wandering by would marvel at the  **_delicate savagery of it_ ** \- the dark of Charles’ eye,  _ smoldering,  _ maw opened to let his tongue free, the furrow to his brow like a stitch to a dress when teeth imbedded in his throat, Javier’s hips pushed between his legs-

Lips baring  _ wolven teeth, snarls- _

Heat rising off the skin, like two bulls with their horns  _ caught,  _ a brawl in morning dew-

_ sunlight like steam, sinew heady machinery- _

Javier makes a noise in his throat, quiet,  _ hot- _

Charles can’t stop his fingers from shaking, but what does it matter?

The coyote has their pants undone in mere moments, he can’t tell, is his breath his own, or the man’s? What is filling his lungs now? Spiced cigarettes, the flavor of spilt  _ blood  _ dribbling over his skin, tongued over his teeth like  _ candy  _ that Javier was forcing down his throat. They were covered in it, a spray like gunfire smear across the coyote’s face-

_ feral, feral, feral _

_ Watches,  _ as Javier pulls back- seems to notice his gaze. Wipes at his face with a hand (the other was currently occupied wrapped around the hunter’s upper thigh), seemed nonpurplussed and  _ distant  _ when his own palm came back  _ red, red, red. _

_ Watches,  _ as the man brandished something  _ silver, silver, silver (he’s always had such pretty knives)- _

_ Watches,  _ as the man drove the tip like a caress down the length of his own thumb, spilling red-

_ Watches,  _ as the man lifted the skin soaked in blood, and pressed a messy diagonal line across Charles’ face.

There is an open-mawed  _ smile  _ stretched over Javier’s face, a gasp shivering in his throat, and the hand returns ‘round his thigh to move higher,  _ higher,  _ sinks into the fabric of his pants against his ass, lips pressed right up against his, moving faster than sound seems to be able to reach his ears-

But when it does, it’s like everything is  _ silent,  _ except for Javier’s voice and their desperate breaths-

“  **_Te ves bien en sangre._ ** ”

He doesn’t know what it means, but from the  _ smoldering  _ look alight in the man’s eyes, he can only imagine…

_ Spits words  _ over his teeth-

“ … Miskwi… naabe-waagosh… “

_ There is blood in his mouth.  _ In thick, cloying, heaving in his nose- Javier’s palm is still slick with scarlet,  _ heat,  _ as it wraps around the two of them. He’s never enjoyed the taste of it, no matter how much of it splayed across his hands, his face. Could  _ feel his own,  _ jerking under his skin like unruly stag.

_ Thundering  _ in his ears, facing a bear head-on.

Teeth on his lips, his own  _ curving  _ from his maw to sink into skin. Sweat, and copper, almost sickening on his tongue-

cigarette smoke, sweet-

saliva  _ cold- _

tongue  _ hot- _

_ gunsmoke, oil,  _ heady in his nose-

Javier paws at him like they’re both dying, and Charles is both exhausted and overwhelmed so much so his nerves are shivering. But he lets it.  _ Lets it.  _ Drags dirt-coated fingernails into the skin of the coyote’s  _ spine,  _ grunts with the slam of hip bones into his that he gets in response. He’s never been kissed this long in his  _ life,  _ no with anyone.

His cock is  _ throbbing,  _ and Javier’s is leaking all over their clasped fingers, a pace frantic and something about being off the edge of having killed someone seems to be making them both  _ velvet-hard- _

**feels good.**

The  _ look  _ on the other man’s face is open, half-lidded, and he recognizes that Javier is an attractive man. Always has been, but would he always be?  _ Time would tell. _

Their pace is faltering, Charles can’t stop his hips from shuddering, and the two of them are rocking together heady, _strong,_ and it’s making heat rise to his face in a way that is _so_ _eerily similar_ to being in the thick of a fight. How _interesting,_ that to know someone intimately, the two strongest ways were to fight and to fuck. Crude, maybe, but weren’t they all? Human _nature,_ and all that?

He can hardly breathe, can hardly  _ speak,  _ everything is so overwhelming, he feels  _ dizzy- _

Javier makes a  _ growling noise  _ that Charles instinctively echoed, and suddenly their kisses are harsher-

_ crueller. _

It’s so  _ sharp  _ in his skin, he’s leaking everywhere, and it hits him with the force of a horse’s kick when his muscles stiffen without his control,  _ spilling  _ over their hands with a fettering  _ groan,  _ just the same as Javier  _ stuttered  _ in his hip’s rolling, and then mixing together between them-

_ Thick, hot, sticky- _

The two swayed quietly, the coyote’s forehead cradled in his collarbone just as much as he was relying on the man’s strong hands to keep him upright against the tree. He feels  _ weak, tired,  _ in a way he hasn’t in a long time. Or, maybe just now Charles was realizing just  _ how tired  _ he’s been, all this time…

There’s a  _ noise,  _ and he does obey it. Knows what it means, when the other man shifted  _ closer- _

He looks at Javier, he does. Truly. Genuinely. And the musician looks back, more sincere than Dutch has ever been in his  _ life,  _ or ever would be. It feels soft, and recognizing, and  _ understanding something  _ even if you didn’t want to.

_ Accepting,  _ that’s the word.

The two clean off wordlessly, and Charles crouches in the dirt and leaves for a moment, letting the fresh earthen tone clear the blood from his nose, from his hands. He can see the coyote hesitate, in his periphery, and he does look up. He does. Just to see Javier staring down at him,  _ unreadable expression  _ again. Shuttered. Charles imagines he looks like that, too. And when he rises, an ache in his knees, a hand comes out towards him.  _ Hesitates,  _ in an unsure way that doesn’t fit Javier’s confidence as bold as the gold of his boots. It settles on his bicep, and the two linger together, staring at the touch because he doesn’t know what will happen if he looks up-

Does. Still does.

When their eyes meet, it feels almost like closing a chapter, but in a bittersweet way. Charles can hear John’s voice calling for them, but they don’t look away just yet. Need to close it, can’t leave leaks. 

A  _ sigh  _ on his lips, about to say something-

“ Do you wonder how life would’ve been if we were born into goodness? “

It’s said in a way that’s not really a question, but an uneasy tone and oddly cadenced-

A pregnant  _ quiet, for a moment- _

“ Yes. “

Javier’s downcast eyes, focused on where their skin was still connected,  _ curled  _ for a moment in a baleful way. His smile is something ugly,  _ hateful,  _ part smirk and part scorn, as his brows furrowed. It’s not directed at Charles, he knows that-

“ Thought you were gonna say ‘we are good’, or something a wise man would say. “

There is no defensiveness there, and the hunter matches it-

“ No. “

_ and you know that. _

The coyote meets his gaze then, amused and angry, lips folded in on itself, nodding  _ slow… _

_ Maw opens,  _ like he’s about to say something. But his pride won’t let him, won’t let him  _ say it- _

_ yes. i do know. _

But Charles understands anyway. Knows the chapter is closed, even if they both acknowledge it in different ways. It doesn’t hurt, at least not in the heart-fluttering way one might expect it to feel. To let go of a family, of an idea you’d pledged your life to. People drew to ladies’ diaries, of boy’s journals,  _ pouring  _ out their heartache and how much their chests’ felt  _ broken. _

This doesn’t feel the same.

It feels like closing a book, one you’d been reading for so long, and realizing that although it had its place in your life… there were other books to be read. You were so  _ immersed in the tale,  _ that when you shut the binding, your head felt fuzzy and ripe for a headache. Almost couldn’t realize… that was it. That was everything. Pulling your head out of a river, where you’d gotten used to the quiet rumble in your ears, the  _ lap  _ of liquid on your face.

Something you were  _ used to, attached to,  _ now over. And Charles knew that for them, this book was best left closed.

Javier nodded then, something final, befitting of  _ grace, knowing,  _ and his hand slips from Charles’ arm. Starts up the hill, grabbing a body as he went, and the hunter turned away to the man they’d felled together. Neither one considered themselves the  _ looking back type,  _ but he could feel the burn to do it in his jaw. Could just see the man pause,  _ pause… _

Just once,  _ just one time- _

He does look up. And he sees Javier look too, and they stare for a mere few seconds. And when the coyote turns his head away, that’s when the book seemed to close for good. Could hear it in his head, where it echoes in an empty room.

Charles drags the body out of camp and lets it fall down the cliffside, leaving it to rot and be fed on by the diseased, rabid wild life of the poisoned land they dwelled.

. . .

Beaver Hollow is quiet at night. Always quiet, aside from the bleeding trees and earthen rise busy doing nothing but being a gravesite.

Charles spends most of his time at the scout campfire- the main one is too  _ open,  _ feels like a  _ target,  _ and being over here he can listen to Arthur’s coughing and keep an eye on his breathing through the night. Can bring him water when he needs it  _ (but doesn’t want it) _ , and be the watchdog taking the stag’s place in the Arthur-John pair. He can see the wolf across the rise, behind his tent, coiled up on the roots of the tree there. 

_ Watching. Listening. _

Dutch, funnily enough, has his tent right in the maw of the brood’s sickening nest. Finds some kind of  _ symbolism _ in it, the man protecting himself by being deep in the camp’s recesses, and yet being so  _ comfortable  _ sleeping where he and Arthur had seen a man skinned and blood-eagled on a pyre. 

How funny… he doesn’t laugh.

Arthur is breathing alright tonight, and Javier is  _ quiet. Subdued.  _ Perhaps bad-tempered.

The hunter can just see the man at the main fire, no longer a guitar in his hands like it would’ve been only a few months before. Watches the coyote  _ stare  _ into the flames, burning its image into his eyes, and the shadows cast drawn, grave shadows over his tired face.

He doesn’t look up, and Charles does nothing to get his attention. Doesn’t want it, not right now.

There is something uncomfortably  _ comforting  _ about the axe in his hands, which he has been slowly sharpening over the past few hours, lethargic and halfheartedly. It doesn’t need to be any more sharp-edged, it had just taken a man’s arm off without hesitation that afternoon.

He can still taste the  _ blood- _

swallows it down.

Leans back against his own chosen tree, able to see the stars through the ugly, spindly trees around the clearing. Feels a rattle in his chest, wonders about the natives at the reservation, listens to Arthur  _ breathe- _

In.

Out.

In.

Out.

Hosea was right.

_ Wisdom came at a terrible price. _

  
  



End file.
